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Susan Haskell's Mommy Dilemma

By  Posted: Jun 9, 2008

Yes, Susan Haskell (Marty, ONE LIFE TO LIVE) is an Emmy-award-winning actress who shares her life with daytime's Thorsten Kaye (Zach, ALL MY CHILDREN). Kaye and Haskell have two daughters: McKenna, 5, and Marlowe, 1. Yet in many ways, Haskell is no different from other moms. Her decision to go back to work was not an easy one. But then, she and Kaye found a great nanny. Read on.

Soap Opera Weekly: You've had your nanny since your first baby?

Susan Haskell: No. McKenna and I didn't have a nanny — I did it all myself. Which was kind of neat. I wanted to do that. By the end of my [second] pregnancy I was in bed, and obviously I couldn't be in bed, have Thorsten working and have McKenna running around.

Weekly: Right. That would be a challenge.

Haskell: Difficult. Even with my fantastic friends. We ended up looking for a nanny for the last month-and-a-half. Oh, my goodness, talk about lucky. And what a true blessing she's been. She's like a part of the family now. She's great with the baby. McKenna adores her. And I can trust her. She knows the whole routine, so it's a matter of simply sitting down with her in the beginning of the week and saying, "Okay, I'm working here, we don't know when, but, sometime that day, and Thorsten's off this day. And Thorsten's mom is going to be here to help put the baby to sleep." We're figuring it out. We thought, "Why not do it while Thorsten's here, and we know we're on this coast, and we have the people who love our kids and are going to help us do it?"

Weekly: And I'm sure it's a labor of love for Grandma.

Haskell: Oh, yes. It's a real chore for her (laughs). That's what I mean, to know that there are people here, and I don't mean to be sappy about it. People go to work all the time; I wanted to be home. I really wanted that. And to do just that for five years. I was lucky.

Weekly: I'm sure there are many mothers who would love to have been able to have the opportunity.

Haskell: It seemed like the right time. I wasn't going to be gone 9 to 5 every single day. I wouldn't do it that way. I don't have to. And I like being with my girls. But to do a little something else by myself, for myself, is just healthy. And to go back to a place [where] people are going accommodate that — really, what else can you ask for?

Weekly: Was it still hard to leave home the first day?

Haskell: Oh, yeah. And then, I think, on the first long day, McKenna called and left me a message on the phone crying, because she had fallen off a rock and she told me she had four Band-Aids. Your stomach just drops out from the bottom. It's awful. But she's dramatic (laughs). And I've taken days here and there to do other things. McKenna's very excited to come in and see where I work, meet everybody. And then you come back and they love you and it all feels good. It's tough for the baby, too, because I’ve only been away for one morning, and the one morning I had to go in last week, I went in the night before, just because it was such an early call, and that was hard. It was a hard not taking her out of bed in the morning...but Thorsten was there.